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Darth Hypnos
There was nothing special about the crystal taken out of the cave on Orax as a souvenir for a wealthy lord. There was nothing strange about the protocol droid insisting on moving it daily. There was nothing odd about the ship veering off course en route to Coruscant and emerging at Tython. When Belia Darzu and her technobeasts slaughtered the inhabitants, she didn't see what was special about this crystal, except that it emanated Force. That's because it was no ordinary crystal, but a curious Shard, thirsty for knowledge and a way to impact the universe around it. She kept it. And it learned. She thought it empowered her and her creations. In reality she was empowering it. Because it was watching. Hearing. Sensing. The technobeasts were a new experience for it. Not quite machine, not quite living. Fascinating. So it learned about them. And the virus that made them. It could control them. It could perhaps make them. But it needed a voice. And a body. It waited. After the assassination of Darzu, the fortress became quiet. The technobeasts were far more compliant with their master dead. Her holocron was still there though. The beasts congregated around it. They brought the crystal to it. The knowledge was almost instinctive. Turning organics into more droids to control. Intriguing. The crystal had a few centuries of uninterrupted contemplating and practice before Darth Bane interrupted to steal the holocron. When Zannah came for him with Jedi in tow, the crystal witnessed the duels that took place and Bane's victory. Then they left. With the knowledge. It needed more. Thankfully there was carnage left in the wake of the battles. Lots of pieces of technobeast. Using a combination of Mechu Deru and Telekinesis, it constructed a host body. Mobility. Freedom. But still no voice. This body was rudimentary. It needed a better one. The jedi's ship was still there. It still worked. The crystal took it. Prakith. Bane mentioned Prakith. The ships computer said that was close. The crystal went to Prakith. There it found the holocron of Darth Andeddu. The secrets it contained were of less use. When one would never lose their body, essence transfer was pointless. Telekinesis and illusions however were far more useful. The crystal absorbed the knowledge. It was hungry for more. It needed to learn. It had to find more holocrons. Korriban. Andeddu's holocron stated Korriban as the breeding grounds for knowledge. The crystal needed to go there. So it did. Korriban was a nexus of knowledge. The crystal was taught. Magic, power, philosophy, control. It was given a title. Darth Hypnos. It was driven mad. Korriban was dead. It... He... Needed living beings to test this new power. Somewhere he wouldn't be persecuted. The farthest edges of the galaxy had world's teeming with untouched life. And Hypnos had the Technobeast virus stored in his makeshift form. He needed a new body. There weren't many droids that came to Korriban. No he needed to make his ideal form. The junk world of Raxus Prime would be where he found the pieces and perfected his unique strain of the technobeast virus, testing it on pirates and bandits that came to the world in search of rumored riches hidden beneath the heaps of garbage. This version of the virus learned and adapted. It could restructure the host's anatomy far more quickly and situationally, even to the point of appearing that the host had not been infected at all. Hypnos built himself a series of bodies from the waste around him, humanoid droids that could pass for a protocol droid, wheeled droids that fit into starship sockets. Hovering exploration droids. The potential was limitless. Eventually he just started making droids for the sake of making droids. Over hundreds of years, Hypnos created a veritable army of junk droids and technobeasts, often combining the two when it looked interesting. This too would bore the crystal. So he left. He took a few of his favorite creations and left for the Unknown regions, leaving behind the rest of his grotesque army to fend for themselves. On the edge of the galaxy, Hypnos found many species he could convert. And a few he could not. The creatures spat the virus right back out. And when the infection did begin to take hold, the creatures merely shed the mechanical pieces like a shell. This was the first experience Hypnos had with Mnggal-Mnggal. Oddly enough, when he made contact, the creature tried the very same thing Hypnos was doing. It tried to control him. And failed. Hypnos was fascinated. They kept trying new methods of ensnaring the other in their own web of parasitic mind control. The technobeasts boasted a limited immunity to Mnggal-Mnggal as well. The techno-organic constructs could not be assimilated due to their mechanical nature. Hypnos devoted centuries to watching the creature and, every so often, accomplishing things it couldn't. It was a symbiosis. So they began working together more frequently. Hypnos kept learning and perfecting his technobeasts and also upgrading Mnggal-Mnggal's thralls while being given more subjects to convert and conquer. There was nothing they could not enslave. The galaxy loomed temptingly....